


More Worthy Endeavours

by magnificentbastards



Series: liberté, égalité, fraternité [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, Revolutionary Rhetoric, mentions of future character death, ~chief/guide/centre~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentbastards/pseuds/magnificentbastards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'“Patience,” says Combeferre, squeezing Courfeyrac’s shoulder. Unsaid in that, or so Courfeyrac thinks, is the suggestion that they ought to cherish it, for it will not last: the mud soaking through the seat of his trousers, the throbbing ache in his ribs from the blow of a truncheon, the sight of Combeferre and Enjolras near to him, with their bodies unbroken and their faces free from pain.'</p>
<p>(a series of drabbles written June 5th-6th 2013)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. both necessary and inevitable

Enjolras pulls off his boots and sinks down onto the bed to sit next to Courfeyrac, frowning a little; from where he is positioned on Courfeyrac’s other side, Combeferre marks his place in his book with his finger and leans across to ask, “How was your meeting with Rochambeau?”

“Quite useless,” says Enjolras, pressing two fingers against the bridge of his nose in exasperation at the memory of it, “I diluted my argument beyond recognition in that essay, after Prouvaire told me that the university have my name on their watch-list again — I wrote as though I were the weakest brand of liberal journalist in the legal press, and he nonetheless refused outright to mark my work.”

“Rochambeau would dig Louis Capet from his grave and sit his bones on the throne of France in an attempt to turn back time,” Courfeyrac says from where he sits in between the other two; he slings an arm around Enjolras’ waist to pull him closer. With a sigh, Enjolras leans back so that he is supported by the wall and Courfeyrac’s shoulder, and tugs the knot of his cravat undone so that he can open his collar.

“Courfeyrac is right,” says Combeferre, and when he reaches over Enjolras takes his offered hand without conscious thought, “the man is a lost cause — merely an irritation to be endured. Do not waste your efforts on him.”

“I do not plan to,” Enjolras says, looking up at the ceiling of his lodgings through half-closed eyes, “I will pay someone else in the class to write my essays and to call my name in his lectures, probably.”

“A sensible plan,” says Courfeyrac, whose initial kiss on Enjolras’ cheek then becomes several; Enjolras still has his chin tilted upward, his neck arched, and Courfeyrac makes use of this to tuck his head beneath Enjolras’ jawline and press his lips to Enjolras’ neck.

It is something of a welcome distraction, though it does not stop Enjolras from saying, “I cannot help but think of the hours I have devoted to those essays that I could have spent on more worthy endeavours.”

Courfeyrac, whose kisses on Enjolras’ neck have become open-mouthed ones, murmurs into Enjolras’ shirt collar, “You probably gave Rochambeau several minor heart attacks with the force of your writing, and if that is not a worthy endeavour I don’t know what is.”

“It will not benefit you to dwell upon it, as I’m sure you are aware,” says Combeferre quietly, setting aside the volume of Montesquieu in his lap to lean more comfortably against Courfeyrac. He rubs slow circles on Enjolras’ wrist with his thumb as he continues: “The force that would likely have apoplexied your tutor had you continued apace can be turned toward doubling your output of pamphlets, letters, speeches — I have no doubt you will make up for lost time.”

“You are correct in that,” says Enjolras, reaching his free hand upward to tangle his fingers loosely in the curls at the back of Courfeyrac’s head.

Courfeyrac makes a soft, muffled noise into the base of Enjolras’ neck, kisses his way up Enjolras’ neck to say, his lips brushing the top of Enjolras’ jawline, “You are making up for lost time already, are you not — I read the unfinished speech you left on your desk this morning, it was as excellent as I have come to expect from you.  _The July Monarchy casts a shadow over France. The nation that destroyed its tyrants, the nation that paid for its liberty in blood, now sits a swollen and over-ripe pear upon the throne — it is not enough, citizens, to merely pluck the fruit._ ”

When he has finished his sentence Courfeyrac bites gently at Enjolras’ earlobe, and then at the skin just beneath it, and Enjolras arches a little further back and strokes the back of Courfeyrac’s neck with his thumb. He is, for the most part, composing aloud as he continues in response to the lines that Courfeyrac had quoted: “ _The tree of monarchism — that parasite of the old regime that once more attaches itself to a nation and a people who shun its presence — must be pulled out by the roots if the garden is to grow strong. The weeds that sprout at its base bear the names of despotism, violence, fear, and oppression – ”_

He pauses; firstly to think over the progression of the sentence, secondly because Courfeyrac has started undoing the buttons at the waist of his trousers.

Combeferre says, “The metaphor can be continued as a call to action: _The citizens of France must take up the axes of human progress, must act as one to clear this unwanted, uninvited plague before the garden withers and dies.”_

At once Enjolras begins to compose the next line; he does not vocalise it, however, electing instead to slip two fingers beneath Courfeyrac’s chin and lift Courfeyrac’s head from where it attends to Enjolras’ collarbone.

“Oh—” says Courfeyrac, in response to Enjolras’ questioning look, and then grins, his hand back at the front of Enjolras’ trousers: “Please do not stop on my account: in fact, I’d rather like to see how long you can remain coherent in the face of my distractions.”

Enjolras pauses for a while, glances to his left to see Combeferre watching them. Probably it is the unrestrained interest present in Combeferre’s gaze that solidifies Enjolras’ decision to reply, “The challenge may be a beneficial one,” and as Courfeyrac’s grin grows wider Enjolras lifts his head to bare his neck once more, and says, “ _The good of our nation has been sacrificed in favour of the good of the poisonous trinity of monarchy, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie; the few rule for the interests of the few as they neglect or trample upon the interests of the many, and for as long as this insult of government proceeds it will be both necessary and inevitable for the many -- the oppressed masses -- the people -- to rise up in arms against it.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there was this [famous cartoon](http://s3.amazonaws.com/magnoliasoft.imageweb/bridgeman/supersize/xir147936.jpg) depicting Louis-Philippe as a pear. also, yes, rhetoric + sex again; what can I say, it's good to have a niche


	2. an expression of solidarity

Combeferre wakes up perhaps an hour or so before dawn; through the gap in his curtains the sky shows dark blue-grey, shot through with gold. Probably it is the sound of the birds’ premature chorus outside, or Courfeyrac stirring in his sleep so that his arm brushes Combeferre’s leg, or the ceaseless scratching of a pen nib nearby that wakes him. He is a very light sleeper — though not, evidently, as light as Enjolras, who is sitting at his desk by the wall in precisely the same position he had been when Combeferre fell asleep the night before.

“You have not come to bed,” says Combeferre quietly.

Enjolras glances upward at once, his pen poised still above the page, and after a moment says, “No, I have not.”

Some other man might have chided, berated, called on Enjolras to rest. Combeferre does not. He sits up in bed, pulls the edge of the sheet over Courfeyrac (who, doubtless, will sleep until either of the other two think to wake him up, and then complain that they did not rouse him earlier), and says, “What are you writing?”

“Letters,” says Enjolras, dipping the nib of his pen in the inkpot on his desk. He has not taken off the clothes he wore yesterday, and his hair keeps falling in front of his eyes. “Four requests for arms, with specified quantities and suggested sites for manufacture or procurement, to our Polytechnicien friends; to Prouvaire, advice on the material he ought to use to address the congregation of artists at Dumas’ dinner party next Thursday, for I believe he is on the very precipice of turning them to our cause; to the leader of the Société des amis du peuple in Lyon, an expression of solidarity with the silk-workers’ protests there, a request for literature to spread throughout the capital. That is most of them, though not quite all.”

“Prouvaire has his newest collection,” says Combeferre, when Enjolras has finished speaking, “and I imagine in particular that five-canto piece on the abasement of the unskilled poor will be well-received. I cannot imagine writing of his being  _badly_ received, certainly not by any persons with a modicum of literary taste. The protests in Lyon will, I believe, become an uprising in a matter of weeks; our numbers at the Musain are soon to swell.”

Enjolras inclines his head and makes a soft noise of assent at this, setting the paper on which he writes aside and replacing it with another.

Combeferre continues, “Allow me to assist you — I am not so tired that I cannot formulate a request for gunpowder. Besides, I have had the address of a man who works as a guard at the arms depot in the southernmost block of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine memorised for a week, it is high time I made use of it and found out whether he is as willing to assist us as he previously claimed to be.”

At the desk, Enjolras pushes his hair back, balances his pen across the inkwell, and says, “I would appreciate that.”

The floorboards are a little cold beneath Combeferre’s bare feet as he steps out of bed, pulling the covers over Courfeyrac as he does so and declining to dress in anything more than the nightshirt he has on. There is already a chair positioned opposite Enjolras at the desk, and Combeferre slips quietly into it, screws a silver nib into the spare pen, and straightens the paper in front of him.

He raises a hand across the desk to brush his thumb over Enjolras’ cheek, cup the underside of his jaw, pass between two fingers an unruly curl that has fallen in front of Enjolras’ eyes; “Now, it is bayonets we are shortest on,” he says, “we have a veritable deluge of pistols — I shall ask for more of those along with the powder, if it is agreeable to you.”

Enjolras glances up to meet Combeferre’s gaze as he replies, ”More than agreeable; I advise it.”

“Very well,” says Combeferre, and Enjolras turns his head very slightly into Combeferre’s hand as he pulls his fingers away to pick up the pen. It is barely a gesture at all; but it makes Combeferre smile.


	3. little use in stitching a wound

The chipped and stained plaster of the Musain’s dining-room wall is rough against Courfeyrac’s back where he sprawls against it, and his mouth feels gritty and unclean when he swigs from the bottle of water he holds; outside, the rain has started again in earnest. The wet splatters of water on mud are audible only because the men huddled inside the ruins of the dining-room seem to refuse to speak above a whisper, as though they were mourners at a grave. The metaphor is an ill-fitting one, thinks Courfeyrac, now that the men left behind the barricade are certain to inhabit the tomb and not pay their respects at it.

At his side, Combeferre pulls tight and ties off the bandage he has fitted around the gash in Courfeyrac’s arm. Earlier — Courfeyrac having stood for a while simply pressing his sodden shirtsleeve against the cut, gritting his teeth, and bearing it until either Combeferre or Joly were done tending other wounds — Combeferre had suggested they stitch it; but this had been immediately following Enjolras’ news of the fate of the barricades of their brothers across the city, and so Courfeyrac had merely smiled and said, “I think not, my friend; there seems little use in stitching a wound if I will not live to see it healed.”

When Enjolras joins them he has a pistol in one hand and their last box of powder in the other. He crouches to their level; Courfeyrac marvels at the fact that even sweat and dirt smeared haphazard across his cheekbones cannot mar his appearance, nor the blood seeping into the tattered edges of his ripped collar either. Despite having gone near enough two days of fighting without sleep, he looks neither tired nor wounded. If Courfeyrac had to put words to it, he would say that Enjolras looks as though every moment of his life before now has been merely preparation for this one -- Enjolras at the barricade seems a man who is doing, at last, what he has known he must do since his first day on the Earth.

For a moment they just sit, Courfeyrac resting his fingers on Combeferre’s knee, Combeferre’s hand still braced on Courfeyrac’s upper arm as though to anchor him. Enjolras thumbs some powder down into the flash-pan of the gun he holds, glancing over his shoulder toward the rest of the room and the men ranged around it.

“Do we have our men on the upper levels of the building,” says Combeferre quietly, “with guns and ammunition?”

“What little we have left,” Enjolras responds, with a nod.

“I have distributed bayonets, which will be of some use even without powder or bullets, and Lesgles thought to fetch knives from the kitchens.”

“I hope he did not carry them himself,” Courfeyrac says, leaning his head back against the wall and trying not to think of what the pressure is doing to his curls (they are ruined already, sticky with blood and drenched by the rain after he lost his hat), “he always manages to slip and cut his finger.”

In the opposite corner of the room, someone hums the first bar of a folk tune and breaks off into harsh coughing. The drumming of the rain is ceaseless; Courfeyrac mutters, flippant, “I should rather like the attack to come at once, if it is to come; waiting like this is stifling. I am almost  _bored_.”

“Patience,” says Combeferre, squeezing Courfeyrac’s shoulder. Unsaid in that, or so Courfeyrac thinks, is the suggestion that they ought to cherish it, for it will not last: the mud soaking through the seat of his trousers, the throbbing ache in his ribs from the blow of a truncheon, the sight of Combeferre and Enjolras near to him, with their bodies unbroken and their faces free from pain.

“Patience,” Enjolras echoes, and though his fingers are curled loosely around Courfeyrac’s wrist, his eyes have drifted to linger on the glint of light on metal, outside, where a rare beam of sunlight slants through the crowd to illuminate the side of the barricade; “The future is very near; we must throw the doors wide and welcome it in.”


End file.
